


Hermione Granger and the Last Enemy

by BeMoreKind



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Slow Build, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2019-11-28 13:55:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18209198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeMoreKind/pseuds/BeMoreKind
Summary: She had asked him once before, in the frosted haze of a winter morning, to stay with her. To stay with her next to the frozen river and grow old together.After almost losing Harry, Hermione decides that, if they are going to win the war against Voldemort, she will have to lead.The story begins at the Battle of Hogwarts. After the diadem is destroyed, everything changes.





	1. Prologue

She had asked him once before, in the frosted haze of a winter morning, to stay with her. To stay with her next to the frozen river and grow old together.

She liked to think that part of them had done as she asked, stopped where they were, turned away from the violence and terror and death waiting for them out in the world, and just lived. She hoped those parts, at least, had managed to find some sort of happiness in the twilight of their childhood.

When it all became too much, when she got scared enough to remember that, after all, they were just kids, she would imagine them together, draped in summer, laughing by the water. If she reached out, she could almost touch them.


	2. The Battle of Hogwarts

In the moments after the fire consumed the lost diadem, reducing its corrupted, dusty metal to ash, everything changed.

Hermione crashed to the stone floor outside of the Room of Requirement with a soft groan. She rolled onto her back, willed oxygen into her lungs and, after making reasonably certain that she hadn’t caught fire, rose shakily to her feet, her fingers wrapped tightly around her wand. Shaking her head to try to silence the dull ringing in her ears, she slowly regained full control of her senses, and her eyes found Harry and Ron. Her friends were coughing, slightly scorched and soot-stained, but standing and seemingly unhurt. Ron caught her eye and smiled weakly as Harry cleaned the black ash from his glasses with the bottom of his shirt. Relieved that, for the moment, Ron and Harry were alive and whole, Hermione took a steadying breath and surveyed the chaos around them.

Hogwarts was on fire. The air was hot and sticky, heavy with smoke from flames and spellwork, and sounds of the battle echoed down the corridors, filling Hermione’s ears with shouted incantations, blasts, and screams. The castle shook and trembled with the force of explosions and, though Hermione could not be certain of their origins, the torches lining the corridors vibrated with each blow. They were standing in a presently deserted hallway, but the clamour of fighting grew louder, closer with each passing moment.

Hermione stepped over the prone body of Draco Malfoy--shaking on the floor, still calling out in a choked voice for Crabbe--and rushed to her friends. She threw her arms around them both and held them tightly for just a moment, convincing herself they had made it out of the inferno alive, before letting go and stepping back into the hallway.

Harry screamed. He doubled over in apparent agony, his hands plastered to his forehead.

“Alright, mate?” asked Ron quietly as he put a hand on Harry’s back, his face blanketed with concern. Hermione’s stomach lurched. Harry’s visions, she knew, were getting worse and more violent. And even at their best, they seldom brought good news.

A moment passed, and Hermione suddenly remembered that they weren’t alone. It would not do to let Malfoy learn anything about Harry’s headaches or to guess at their cause. She spun, aiming her wand directly between Malfoy’s eyes.

“Go,” she hissed. “You too, Goyle.”

Draco had composed himself. He looked curiously past Hermione to the spot where Harry stood clutching his head, but said nothing. Hermione tightened her grip on her wand. Rising to his feet, Draco grabbed Goyle’s arm.

“Come on,” he murmured, throwing Hermione a look of pure hatred, “let’s go find our friends. From the sound of things, they do seem to be rather, well, everywhere at the moment.” Hermione kept her wand aimed at Malfoy’s back, her hand steady, until he and Goyle disappeared around the corner at the end of the corridor. A small, quiet voice at the back of her mind whispered “ _you know you should have cursed him when you had the chance_.”

“Hermione!” Harry gasped, pulling her out of her trance. She turned away from the empty hallway and hurried to Harry. His face was pale and clammy, and stretched with panic. “What is it?” she demanded.

“He knows the diadem’s gone,” said Harry. “And he sent his snake away. I couldn’t see where he sent it. He’s so angry.”

“If that snake isn’t here --” began Ron.

“--then we’ve done all we can,’ finished Harry quickly. “We have to get everyone out of here _now_ , before anyone else gets hurt or . . .” He looked at Hermione. “Can you get word to McGonagall?”

Hermione nodded and raised her wand. As always, she concentrated on walking to breakfast in the Great Hall between Harry and Ron the morning after Halloween in their first year, the first time in her life she knew she had friends, that she was not alone, that there was somewhere she belonged.

“ _Expec_ \--” she began, as a horrible scream rang down the hallway. Hermione faltered. The younger Harry and Ron disappeared from her mind’s eye as other thoughts, dark and unbidden, forced their way into her consciousness. She remembered the rest of her friends, fighting throughout the castle--Ginny, Neville, Luna, Hagrid, and so many others, too many to name. Their faces swam in front of her vision as her most trusted memory receded into nothing. It was almost certain, really, that someone she loved was dead or dying on the castle’s cold, unforgiving floors. She had tried to block this thought out as they searched for the diadem, to forget it was a war and pretend instead that she and her best friends were on another childhood quest through their school. But the sounds of the battle were just as effective on her psyche as any dementor, and suddenly she couldn’t pretend anymore. The castle shook again with the force of some unseen dark magic. She let out a soft sob as her wand arm fell.

Harry took her empty hand and squeezed, wrapping his arm around her waist. Hermione drew a deep, calming breath as Ron laid a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re ok,” Harry whispered. She closed her eyes and smiled; more than six years later, a reminder that she was not alone, that she was where she belonged. She stepped out of their touch, raised her wand, looked at Ron, and then at Harry. His bright green eyes did not look away.

 _“Expecto Patronum_ ,” Hermione cried, and a familiar silver otter burst from the tip of her wand and gamboled around the three of them.

“Hi there, stranger,” she whispered to her patronus. “Go find McGonagall, tell her to get everybody out.” Her otter spun in front of her for an instant, then flew through the wall behind her and out of sight.

“Thanks,” she said to Harry and Ron.

“Don’t mention it,” Ron replied simply. “So what do we do now?”

“I have to help get everyone out,” said Harry quickly. “You two--”

“If you say we should leave you and go, I’ll hex you,” said Hermione. They had, in her opinion, suffered this argument quiet enough over the past seven years. “But we need to figure out where to go to be useful. Do you have the Map?”

Harry nodded and pulled a folded piece of parchment out of his front pocket. “ _Lumos_ ,” he murmured, igniting the tip of his wand. “I solemnly swear I am up to no good.” Hermione watched as his eyes raced across the parchment.

Hermione turned back the Room of Requirement, giving it an appraising sort of look. She was certain that the fire of Crabbe’s curse had heavily damaged the Room, but she wondered if it might still work, for a little while at least, particularly now, in the castle’s hour of peril. She closed her eyes and began to pace in front of the seemingly vacant, scorched wall. “ _We need a safe way out of the castle_ ,” she thought, “ _we need a way out where the Death Eaters can’t follow_.” She walked back and forth, her shirt sticking to the back of her neck as the corridor grew hotter.

“Hermione!” called Ron, and she stopped and looked up to see a charred tapestry. It covered the wall from the ceiling to the floor and spanned at least ten feet across. On its blackened front was a lighthouse, striped in red, blue, and gold, whose lamp magically rotated through its threads, spilling light into the darkened hall. Peering closer, Hermione saw the forms of small figures rushing towards the lit tower and a large, red bird circling the lighthouse in perfect synchronization with its lamp. She knew, without quite understanding how, that no Death Eater would be able to find it.

Hermione walked towards the tapestry cautiously, grabbed the edge and pulled it away from the wall. Behind the tapestry was a long, wide hallway lit with torches mounted high above the floor. The hallway was smokey and smelled of burned paper, but dozens of hospitals gurneys were stationed on the right side of the passage, while shelves of bandages, ointment, and small vials of potions lined the left. She hadn’t even thought to ask for medical supplies.

“Thank you,” Hermione whispered to the Room.

“That’s bloody brilliant,” said Ron, who had come around to look behind the tapestry as well. “We can send our lot right through here for a quick way out, and they can apparate somewhere safe once they get clear.”

Hermione let go of the curtain and turned to Harry, who was studying the Map with a look of concern and mingled horror.

“What’s happening?” Hermione asked, moving quickly to his side.

“The Death Eaters are everywhere,” replied Harry, his eyes flashing up and down the parchment. “But they’re spread out. Most of our side is holed up in the Great Hall with Kingsley and McGonagall. There are few of our lot out in the grounds, but it looks like they’re moving back towards the castle. McGonagall must have gotten your message, Hermione.”

Hermione nodded in relief. “We should get down to the Great Hall, see if we can help with the--” Harry cut her off with a gasp, pocketing the map and raising his wand.

“We’ve got to move, now!” Harry yelled, sprinting down hall in the opposite direction Malfoy and Goyle had left, Hermione and Ron following close behind. Harry skidded to a stop and raised his wand just as Fred and Percy came barreling around the corner, flashes of red and green light flying behind them as they turned.

“Get down!” screamed Harry. Percy and Fred threw themselves forward under the aim of Harry’s wand, their momentum carrying them down the hall on their stomachs. Three Death Eaters rounded the corner after Percy and Fred, led by an enormous man who had lost his mask in the fighting, his scarred face obscured in the torchlight of the corridor. The scarred man saw his quarry prone on the ground and his mouth turned into a vicious grin as he raised his wand.  

“ _STUPEFY!_ ” cried Harry. His red jet of light struck the man the chest and the spell lifted him off his feet and threw him backwards. The man careened off of one of his companions, knocking him to the floor, before crashing into the far wall with a sickening crunch. Harry aimed a second curse at the standing attacker, but the Death Eater deflected his silver spell with a flick of his wand. Hermione saw the third, fallen Death Eater push himself up from the floor and aimed her wand at his rising form.

“ _PETRIFICUS TOTALUS!_ , _”_ she thought, concentrating hard. Her spell caught the man unawares; he had no sooner regained his feet than his arms snapped to his sides and he toppled backwards onto the floor, immobilized.

Harry was dueling with the final Death Eater, his face contorted with a fury Hermione was not sure she had ever seen in her friend before. Teeth bared, he traded curses with the masked man, and the air around them crackled with their magic as they hurled spells at each other. Ron, Fred, and Percy stood to the sides, their wands raised hesitantly, clearly caught between wanting to help and fearing that they would get in the way. The Death Eater blocked everything Harry threw at him, but Harry was quicker and his sheer onslaught of spells-- _”STUPEFY!” “IMPEDIMENTA” “REDUCTO” “STUPEFY_ \--forced his opponent further and further back into the hall.

Harry ducked a Killing Curse and, as the green jet flew over his head and down the corridor he aimed a nonverbal spell at the Death Eater. The jinx found its mark. Hermione recognized _Levicorpus_ at once as, a moment later, the Death Eater was upside down, hanging magically from one ankle.

_“PETRIFICUS TOTALUS”_

_“STUPEFY”_

Ron and Fred’s spells hit the suspended Death Eater at the same time and he, too, crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor, landing with a dull thud onto the bloody mess of his companion.

“Thank you very much for the assistance,” said Percy stiffly.

“Yeah you lot sure come in handy,” remarked Fred. “I have to say, it was a lot more fun _before_ we were outnumbered, eh Perce?”

“Quite,” replied Percy. “How did you know we were coming around that corner?”

“I solemnly swore I was up to no good,” said Harry with a wink to Fred. With a low wave of his wand, Harry summoned the Death Eaters’ wands to him. He caught them and, one by one, snapped them in two.

“I’m not letting them wake up and curse us from behind,” said Harry in reply to Ron’s shocked expression.

“So what’s the plan?” asked Fred. “We came up this way following one of them,” he gestured to the bodies on the floor, “and sort of lost track of everyone else.”

“Get down to the Great Hall and help get everyone out,” replied Ron. “Which way do you reckon is clearest, Harry?”

As Harry opened his mouth to answer, several things happened at once. A massive, ominous wave of magic hit the castle wall closest to where they were standing--Hermione struggled to keep her feet, and Ron’s wand flew out of his hand and down the corridor towards the unconscious Death Eaters. A friendly, tired female voice down the hall called out “Harry, over here!” And as Harry, Fred, and Hermione turned to see Cho Chang limping towards them, trailed by Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil, Rodolphus Lestrange rounded the opposite corner to find Ron, wandless, standing right in front of him.

“Ron look out!” yelled Percy. As Rodolphus Lestrange raised his wand, Percy raced forward, hurtled himself into Ron, knocking his younger brother aside. Lestrange’s wand cut through the air, a spell that looked quite like violent, purple lightning obliterated the beginning of Percy’s nonverbal shield charm and struck him in his right shoulder. Percy collapsed to the floor, writhing on the ground, his mouth stuck in a silent scream.

“NO!” Harry yelled, hurling a curse at Lestrange, who blocked it and sent a jet of light back at Harry. Harry deflected the curse and spun, sending another jet of light back at the Death Eater. Ron rushed to Percy’s side, fell to the floor, and grabbed his hand.

“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?” Ron sobbed to his older brother. Hermione ran to Percy as well, throwing a shield charm between Ron and Percy and Harry and Lestrange. Percy looked desperately bad. The color was draining from his face and his convulsions became more violent with each passing second. Hermione tore his shirt away and saw a large wound and a deep purple bruise slowly growing outward from its center.

“We have to get him out of here,” muttered Hermione. Ron said nothing, but nodded. “Fred, can you--”

But Fred had strode past where Percy lay on the ground. He walked to Harry’s side, pushed him bodily out of the way, and raised his wand.

 _“AVADA KEDAVRA!”_ screamed Fred. A jet of green light shot from his wand and hit Rodolphus Lestrange in squarely the chest. He fell, dead, into a crumpled head on the floor, a look of shock and surprise etched permanently on his face.

Hermione gasped, but decided in the same instant that she did not have the time or luxury to be shocked; her friends needed her to be at her best right now, and Hermione Granger at her best was able to push her emotions aside, to be examined later, until the crisis had passed. Harry grabbed Fred’s arm and looked at him closely. Fred put his arm on Harry’s shoulder, shook his head sadly, and moved to Percy’s side.

Harry picked up Ron’s wand from the ground, walked to Percy, and pushed the thin piece of wood into his friend’s hand. Harry’s face was marred with sorrow as he looked at Percy, and Hermione knew that, somehow, he would find a way to blame himself for a spell cast by Rodolphus Lestrange. She looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. Cho, Lavender, and Parvati had reached them, and all three girls looked down at Percy with concern.

“Oh my god,” whispered Cho. The three girls bore violent evidence of the battle. Cho was bleeding heavily from a wound on her right leg, her left eye was swollen shut, and she had what looked like a nasty burn on the right side of her face. Lavender’s shirt was torn and hanging off her shoulders, she was bleeding profusely from a wound on her scalp, and she kept her left arm imobile and pressed against her side; she was clearly distracted, even forgetting to throw a dirty look at Hermione and Ron. Parvati was holding a cloth hard against her stomach, her t-shirt soaked in blood leaking from her abdomen. Hermione recognized the hollow looks on their faces, the same look she had seen in the mirror the night they escaped from Malfoy Manor. They were done fighting for the night, and needed to get somewhere safe.

Hermione waved her wand and Percy rose four feet off the ground, still shaking with the force of Lestrange’s spell. She moved him quickly down the hall and towards the new passage created by the Room of Requirement. The others followed in their wake, Harry walked backwards with his wand pointed back down the hallway, guarding their backs. Ron ran ahead and pulled back the tapestry and Hermione gently guided Percy onto the first hospital bed stationed along the wall. The moment he touched the bed, a bottle of thick, orange potion flew off the opposite shelf, the sheets on the bed moved of their own volition and held Percy’s mouth open, and the potion bottle emptied itself down his throat. Percy stopped convulsing and lay still, his breath shallow but even. The bruise which had been inching closer and closer to his heart, stopped expanding.

“This Room’s outdone itself this time,” Hermione sighed. As she spoke, the passage rearranged itself some fifteen yards ahead of her into several distinct tunnels heading in different directions. Hermione put her hand on the hospital gurney, and bright red letters appeared, hovering in midair, at the entrance to the leftmost tunnel. They read “Shell Cottage,” and a yellow arrow floated beneath them, pointing down the passageway.

“I suppose that tunnel will take you to Bill and Fleur’s,” said Hermione, looking at Ron and Fred. “You both should take him there at once. Fleur might be able to help and, if not, she’ll be able to send for help. We can’t do anything for him here.” Neither Fred nor Ron moved towards the gurney, and Hermione knew that both of them were unwilling to leave the rest of their family behind.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Ron, looking at Hermione with concern.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hermione snapped, perhaps too harshly. “Percy is dying and he needs both of you right now. If you get to Shell Cottage and Fleur isn’t there or you need to transport him somewhere, you’ll need more than one wand. Go, take care of your brother, and Harry and I will make sure the rest of the family makes it out ok.”

Ron looked unconvinced, but Fred nodded gravely.

“Let’s go, Ron,” said Fred. He looked seriously at Harry and Hermione. “Tell George he better come back alive, or I’ll kill him. We promised we’d do everything together. Dying isn’t an exception.” Hermione chuckled weakly and nodded.

“But--” started Ron.

“I’ll be fine,” Hermione insisted. “I’ll be with Harry.” Ron looked over her shoulder at Harry, who nodded. Hermione stepped forward and put her hand on Ron’s arm. “Go. Take care of Percy. I’ll be fine, I promise.” Ron took a shaky breath and grasped Hermione’s hand.

“I’ll see you afterwards,” he said tightly. Hermione nodded. Ron turned and motioned to Fred. They grabbed either side of Percy’s gurney and pushed it quickly towards the tunnel, before turning left and disappearing out of sight. Hermione stared at the empty space after they had gone.

“You three should get out now too,” Harry said to Cho, Lavender and Parvati, looking closely at their injuries. Cho was the only one who looked like she could still fight, but even her injuries were nothing to scoff at. “This is the quickest way. Do you know where you’re going?”

“Glasgow,” said Cho quickly. “Oliver has a safe house there.” Harry nodded and stepped aside to let the girls into the passageway. They shuffled slowly past him; Cho smiled at him and Lavender put her hand on his shoulder as she passed. Sure enough, as soon as they entered the Room, red letters appeared above a tunnel off to the right, spelling “Glasgow,” with a yellow arrow directing them down the passage. Bandanges, potions and ointments flew off the shelves and hovered in front of each girl. Parvati took hers, then turned to look at Hermione and Harry.

“If you see Padma, tell her where I went,” Parvati said. “I’ll meet her back at our parents once it’s safe to travel.” She paused. “Tell her to be careful.”

“I will,” replied Hermione. “You all be careful, too.” They nodded and turned to leave.

“Cho, Lavender, Parvati?” called Harry, tentatively. The girls looked at him with curiosity. “Thank you.” Lavender and Parvati looked at Harry with a bemused sort of look, but Cho smiled knowingly at Harry.

“Come on,” she said to her companions. “There’s leftover Thai takeout waiting for us back at the apartment. Leftover takeout, a hot shower, and additional medical supplies,” she added grimly. Hermione and Harry watched as the girls staggered to the end of the passageway, turned right, and disappeared down the tunnel.

Hermione turned to Harry. He looked so, so tired, his usually bright eyes clouded with sorrow, fear, and something that looked like rage. She remembered the way he had thrown himself at the Death Eaters and Lestrange, his fury as he dueled with them in the corridor, and knew somewhere within herself that Harry must be feeling everything that had clawed at her heart when she tried and failed to cast her patronus. He too knew that his friends were dying throughout the castle, but he also had the terrible knowledge that, though he had never asked it of them, they were dying for him.

“ _I’d help you carry it, if you’d let me_ ,” she thought. But some things were better unspoken, particularly when their lives were still in jeopardy. And besides, she had to believe he already knew, just like she knew those things that had passed between them but never been said.

“Let’s get down the Great Hall,” Hermione whispered, “find Ginny and the others, see if we can help get everyone out. Can you find us the safest way down?”

Harry nodded and, once again pulled the Map from his pocket. Hermione walked over to the shelves of medical supplies. She pulled her magically-shrunken handbag out of pocket and, with a flourish of her wand, returned it to its normal size. As she opened the bag and looked expectantly at the shelves bottles of potions, stacks of bandages, and other supplies flew rose into the air and dropped directly into the bag with a muffled clamour.

“You know,” said Hermione with a small smile, shrinking her bag and putting it back into her pocket, “we clearly suffered from a lack of imagination while we were in school. Just think what we could have done with this Room.” She walked over to Harry, who was quickly folding up the Map and putting it back into his pocket. He looked at her expectantly, wand held stiffly at his side. Hermione knew that he was anxious to find the others.

“You should get under the Cloak,” Hermione said. “You’re far too tempting a target for each and every Death Eater in the castle.”

“Hermione--” Harry began in exasperation, but she overrode him at once.

“We’ll get moving a lot faster if you don’t take the time to argue with me,” she said. “Put on the cloak.” Harry exhaled, shook his head, and pulled the Cloak out of his pocket. He beckoned to her.

“Both of us,” he said quietly, but firmly. Hermione nodded. If this was what it took for Harry to take even the smallest precautions with his life, so be it. Harry threw the cloak over both of them, covering them except for the bottoms of their feet, which she hoped wouldn’t be obvious to anyone they found in the dim corridors. It was always awkward to move together under the cloak, and it took a certain level care to not end up a confused, tangled, half-visible mess on the floor. But they had traveled through this castle under the cloak for six years; they had learned long ago how to walk under its shroud together.

It was an uneventful journey. There apparently weren’t many Death Eaters left in their part of the castle, and Harry had been able to chart a vacant, clear path through Hogwarts. Hermione had been worried, after seeing the anger on Harry’s face, that he might use the Map to seek out Death Eaters wandering the halls, but she needn’t have worried. She suspected that her presence, if nothing else, had restrained him; he wouldn’t needlessly put her in harm’s way, no matter how angry and guilt-ridden he was after witnessing Percy’s injury. Hermione did have to wonder, however, how much different Harry’s trip to the Great Hall would have been if he had made it alone.

They came to the landing directly above the Great Hall when Harry stopped cold and Hermione slammed into his back, knocking him forward. Harry whipped off the cloak and sprinted down the landing. Hermione opened her mouth to call out to him but, when she realized why he was running, her voice stopped in her throat.

At the end of the landing, a few paces away from the stairs leading down to the Great Hall, lying in a shallow pool of blood, were the bodies of Ernie Macmillan and Susan Bones. Harry was standing over them, biting his lip, a hollow look in his eyes. Hermione walked slowly to stand next to him. Three daggers, long and thin with black onyx handles, protruded from Ernie’s chest, their ends buried through his blood-soaked shirt. Susan looked unharmed, like she was sleeping, and Hermione knew she had been taken with a Killing Curse. She wondered, idly, if it had mattered to them that they died together.

Harry exhaled a shaky breath and Hermione took his hand, pulling him away. There would be time, later, to tell him it wasn’t his fault, and time for him to refuse to believe her. But now they had to move.

“I closed their eyes,” said a quiet voice behind them. Harry reacted in an instant. He put his hand on Hermione’s shoulder and pushed Hermione roughly to the side, out of the way, and spun with his wand aloft. Hermione recovered herself, turned to face the voice, and saw that it came from Padma Patil. Padma was the mirror image of her twin sister, but hands were covered in blood and shaking, and she wasn’t holding a wand. Her whole body shook as she looked at Harry. Harry did not lower his wand.

“Who was your date to the Yule Ball in our fourth year,” Harry asked, his wand aimed at Padma’s heart.

“Ron Weasley,” Padma said robotically. “But I left him for a boy from Beauxbatons.”

“He deserved it,” said Harry, lowering his wand and glancing at Hermione. “What happened here?” Hermione moved towards Padma. She was in shock and, just as with her sister, Hermione knew she was done fighting for the time being, hopefully for forever. Hermione waved her wand, vanishing the blood from Padma’s hands and conjured a blanket she draped carefully around the thin girl’s shoulders. Hermione looked sharply at Harry, hoping he would understand that now wasn’t the time for an interrogation, when Padma spoke.

“I was at the other end of the hall,” Padma said softly, in an even voice. “I looked away for a second and there was a whole gang of Death Eaters surrounding Ernie. He yelled for Susan to run but she tried to save him. I was too far away and by the time I even thought to raise my wand they--”

“Shh” said Hermione, wrapping her arm around Padma’s shoulders. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“I didn’t want to die,” cried Padma softly, leaning into Hermione’s embrace.

“Padma,” said Hermione softly, “we saw Parvati earlier. She’s ok, and we got her out of the castle to Oliver Wood’s safehouse in Glasgow. She wanted you to meet her at your parents as soon as its safe.” Padma inhaled sharply but nodded.

“Where’s your wand?” asked Harry kindly. Padma shook her head.

“ _Accio_ Padma’s wand,” Harry murmured and a thin piece of wood flew down the hall and into Harry’s outstretched hand. “Come on,” he said softly, pressing the wand firmly into Padma’s hand, “just a little further to go.” Padma nodded, and Hermione was reminded of the calming effect Harry could have on others in a crisis. She had taken his presence for granted for so long that she often forgot how much better it felt to have Harry around when the rest of the world was falling apart. Padma’s eyes widened as Harry unfurled the cloak and threw it over the three of them.

“Stay close to me and take very short steps,” said Hermione. “No one will be able to see anything except our feet.” The shuffled down the staircase, Padma bumping into Hermione every few steps, and came haltingly to the entrance to the Great Hall. As they approached, Hermione saw that the massive wooden doors had been magically transfigured into solid alabaster stone. The fighters inside had clearly established this barrier while they organized the retreat from the castle. She looked closely at smooth stone, unsure of how long it would hold against a focused assault. More importantly, she had no idea how they were supposed to get through into the refuge of the Hall.

“I need a closer look,” said Hermione, stepping out from under the cloak. “Keep an eye out for me, Harry.”

But Hermione had no sooner turned to the entrance that a tartan-covered arm shot through the door, seized her by her collar, and pulled her bodily through the stone.

“ _Hermione!”_ she heard Harry yell as she was yanked through the barrier and into the Great Hall, feeling the ice of the solid stone envelop her as she moved through it; Hermione imagined the experience to be somewhat akin to swimming in a pool of gelatin. The moment she had emerged on the other side she raised her wand, and looked up into the face of Minerva McGonagall. Her professor held her fast by her collar, aiming her wand at Hermione’s heart.

“What did I tell you when you visited my office in your first year?” McGonagall asked harshly, none of the warmth she often reserved for Hermione evident in her voice.

“You told me I belonged here,” said Hermione, with a small smile. “And that Draco Malfoy was a horrible young man to whom I should pay no attention whatsoever.” As she answered, Professor McGonagall visibly relaxed and gave her a tired smile.

“It’s good to see you, Hermione,” said McGonagall, moving her hand from Hermione’s collar to her shoulder and squeezing hard.

“Professor,” began Hermione, “Harry and --” but McGonagall was already looking over her shoulder and raising her wand. Hermione turned and saw that, from the Great Hall, the barrier was transparent. Harry and Padma, out from under the protection of the cloak, were frantically looking for a way in. With a low, sweeping waive of her wand, McGonagall pulled them through the wall, their looks of shock and alarm melting as they came through the threshold and saw their professor smiling on the other side.

“It’s about time you got here, Potter,” said McGonagall with a small smile.

“Sorry, Professor,” replied Harry clumsily. “We need to get everyone out of here at once.”

“I received Ms. Granger’s message, Potter and we are trying our best,” replied McGonagall. “As you can see we’ve sealed off access to the Great Hall so that I could lift the apparation barrier in here. You can now appartate out, but not into this room. Most of our wounded, however, can’t travel by apparation. Even a Portkey is too risky for most. With the Death Eaters at the gates to the castle we don’t have many options.”

“What about the secret passages?” demanded Harry.

As McGonagall started to answer him, explaining in a calm but stern voice that they could not create a caravan of walking wounded through the corridors, many of which were on fire, Hermione stepped around her and surveyed the scene in the Great Hall. She had been so happy to see her professor, so calmed by her presence, that she somehow hadn’t noticed the scene unfolding behind her.

Nothing that Hermione had seen in her young life--not the battle at the base of the Astronomy Tower, not her fight with Nagini at Godric’s Hollow, not even her torture at Malfoy Manor--could have prepared Hermione for what she saw in the Great Hall. It was chaos; a cacophony of frantic action punctuated by the piercing sounds of pain, anguish, grief, and despair. The floor of the Hall was covered in blood, pooling in places, and Hogwart’s defenders ran through it without a downward glance as they worked.

On the left side of the wall were the wounded. Dozens of people, their bodies broken to one degree or another, sat or lay in a neat line while their friends and comrades who were somehow still upright and mostly whole tried to heal them just enough to be transported out of the castle. Padma walked numbly towards the line of wounded, wand in hand, and Hermione hoped that the necessity around her could snap Padma out of her mournful reverie. As Hermione’s eyes followed Padma, she focused on faces of the wounded and their helpers, and her heart nearly stopped in her chest.

Luna Lovegood was lying near the front of the Hall, her face pale, her blonde hair soaked with blood, struggling to breath. Ginny knelt beside her and held her hand, talking softly to her injured friend, while Mrs. Weasley moved her wand over Luna’s chest, her face contorted with panic. Beside them sat Seamus and Dean. Seamus was unconscious, his head resting on Dean’s shoulder, while Dean’s arm was in a sling, his face contorted with terrible pain. Hermione saw the way his leg was bent and knew it was badly broken. She heard a tremendous commotion behind her as George Weasley sprinted past carrying a girl. Katie Bell, Hermione realized.

“ _DAD!_ ” George screamed. “ _SHE STOPPED BREATHING, DAD, WHAT DO I DO_?” Hermione watched as Arthur Weasley ran to George, motioned for George to put Katie down, and shot a small stream of what looked like lightening into Katie’s chest. Hermione started breathing again in rhythm with Katie as the Gryffindor girl's chest once again began to rise and fall.

Hermione turned away from the wounded only to find, somehow, an even worse sight. On the right side of the Hall was a line of bodies, lying quite still in the torch light. Hermione felt the deep sense of dread in her gut that told her they were dead. No one had the time to cover them, so Hermione could see exactly who was among the fallen. Collin and Dennis Creevey lay side by side; they somehow looked even younger in death. Next to them was Justin Finch-Fletchley, who had a massive hole right through the middle of his chest and Sybil Trelawney, her wide eyes still open.

She ran her gaze down the line of the dead, relief washed over her when she did not recognize anyone else she knew, until, at the very end of the Hall, she saw Tonks. Her friend was kneeling over a body, sobbing, her whole frame shaking with visible, unbearable anguish, her hair changing color constantly, several times a second, and Hermione knew without having to look closer that the body belonged to Remus Lupin.

“ _Remus_ ,” she thought. The answer to a question she had not allowed herself to ask. Hermione closed her eyes. She tried to block out the sounds of the room, but Tonks’s sobs cut through the din and pierced her to her core. No, she knew that wasn’t right at all. Remus was only one answer to the question and if she didn’t pull herself together this moment there would certainly be more. She wanted to go to Tonks, to gather her friend into her arms and hold her as she cried. Instead, she turned towards the deep, familiar voice of Kingsley Shacklebolt and willed herself out of her own private requiem.

“We can’t stay here much longer,” Kingsley said in a slow, steady voice. He stood in a circle with Professor McGonagall, Professor Flitwick, and Harry. “We’ll have to risk Portkeys,” he continued. “We are sitting ducks here and, as traumatic as the trip may be, we can’t risk splinching any of the wounded.”

Hermione moved to join them and stood next to Harry, watching Hagrid over Kingsley’s shoulder as he picked up two of the house tables like they were luggage and haul them to the back of the room, making space for more of the wounded. As he put down the tables, a flash of gold light on the back wall caught her eye. It couldn’t be. She strode past Kingsley and McGonagall and peered towards the wall, vaguely aware of eyes on her from all directions. Sure enough, on the back wall, behind where the Headmaster’s chair ordinarily stood, was the charred tapestry, the lighthouse lamp turning softly in its threads. Somehow, the Room had followed them here.

“Harry,” she cried urgently, gesturing to the tapestry. “Look!” Harry looked to where she pointed and caught on immediately.

“Professor,” he said quickly, looking to McGonagall, “there’s another way out of the castle.”

“What are you talking about, Potter?” McGonagall replied sharply.

“Please Professor,” interjected Hermione. “When we were upstairs we asked the Room of Requirement for a way out of the castle. It did as we asked; there’s a secret passage behind that tapestry.”

“A passage to where?” asked Kingsley.

“We think it can take someone wherever they need to go,” replied Hermione. “It took Percy, Ron, and Fred to Shell Cottage after Percy was hurt, and it sent Cho, Lavender, and Parvati to a safe house in Glasglow. It’s also full of medical supplies”

“Are you certain?” asked Kingsley.

“As certain as I can be about a wish-granting room,” said Hermione.

“Hogwarts.” McGonagall said quietly, simply. Kingsley nodded and pointed his wand to his throat.

“ _LISTEN TO ME_ ,” said Kingsley, his already powerful voice now magically amplified and ringing around the Great Hall. In unison, dozens of heads turned to listen to him. “ _MS. GRANGER HAS JUST INFORMED ME THAT THERE IS A PASSAGE OUT OF THE CASTLE BEHIND THE LIGHTHOUSE TAPESTRY ON THE BACK WALL. WORK TOGETHER TO GET THE WOUNDED OUT FIRST._ ”

No one ran, even after this announcement that a path to safety was so close at hand. Hermione watched as those closest to the back of the room walked, limped, and staggered towards the tapestry, most supporting or even carrying another witch or wizard as they went. The first to arrive there whooped in delight as they peered behind the charred hanging and saw the passageways within.

Many of the injured were too hurt to walk. Mrs. Weasley conjured a stretcher for Luna which rose into the air. Hermione saw her whisper something to Ginny, who nodded, turned to waive at her and Harry, and began steering Luna to the back of the room with her wand. Hermione felt Harry tense as he watched her go. After sending Ginny on her way, Molly moved to the next gravely injured fighter--a girl Hermione did not recognize--and conjured another stretcher.

“Minerva, Filius” said Kingsley, “the dead. Can you send the bodies somewhere safe until we can retrieve them for burial?” McGonagall nodded, gripping her wand. “And Minerva, please make sure that Tonks goes home to her son, right now. Mad-Eye’s ghost will haunt me forever if I let her boy become an orphan today.”

McGonagall nodded and walked to Tonks, still prone on the floor and weeping over her husband. Flitwick followed at a distance and watched as McGonagall pulled Tonks to her feet and spoke softly into her ear. Tonks stared straight ahead, not moving or blinking. After several long moments, Tonks nodded, pulled out her wand, reached down to hold her dead husband’s hand, and disapparated.

Professor Flitwick walked to the center of the row of dead and began moving his wand in low, slow movements. The bodies on the floor were soon covered in a glittering shroud, they glowed and sparkled in the pre-dawn light and then, in a fraction of a moment, they were gone.

Hermione, for her part, stayed fixed to the spot, her fingers still wrapped tightly around her wand. She watched the procession as, slowly but surely, the Hall began to empty as more and more of the fighters passed through the tapestry’s threshold. George carried Katie Bell in his arms while Hagrid held the tapestry open for him, and those still behind him, to pass through. Ginny and Luna were already gone; Bill and Neville levitated Dean and Seamus to the back of the room.

Hermione knew she should help. She had always been good with healing spells and she was certain that her wand and her mind would be put to good use if she worked her way towards the wounded. But that was not her purpose and, though she may have been well suited to that task, it never had been. No, her job was, as always, to stay next to Harry, to advise him, to protect him, to help him fight, to try her best to save him. She thought of Tonks, of her beautiful, broken friend, and promised herself silently that she, Hermione, would not share her fate. Failing all else, she knew, Hermione would die with him.

Harry stood next to her, his eyes wide with shock and pain as he watched the fighters file slowly out of the Hall. He ran one hand roughly through his messy hair. Hermione knew that, as much as he might want to, he couldn’t make himself look away. Harry turned quickly to Kingsley.

“I’m going back into the castle,” he told the older wizard. “We still have people out there and I can get to them under my cloak.” Hermione sighed. This was, she knew, the only way Harry could think to assuage his guilt: putting himself in terrible danger, the same kind of danger that had already claimed so many others.

As she opened her mouth to protest, Angelina Johnson came bursting through the threshold, followed closely by Oliver Wood. Wood was carrying Hannah Abbott in his sturdy arms, the Hufflepuff girl was unconscious, her body contorted as though she had been frozen in a state of agony.

“Take her to the back of the room and out behind the tapestry,” Kingsley said at once, gesturing towards Hagrid’s massive form. “Hurry, she looks like she needs help at once.”

“We couldn’t get to everyone,” said Angelina. “We think there are still people hurt in the castle but there’s hundreds of Death Eaters and other fighters on the first floor and they’re starting to head this way.”

Hermione knew at once, without having to look at her friend, what Harry was going to do. She turned to him and, sure enough, he had pulled the Map and his cloak from his pocket.

“Don’t wait for me,” he said quietly to Hermione, disappearing under the cloak.

“ _HARRY NO!_ ” yelled Hermione. She pointed her wand at the spot where he had just disappeared and tried a summoning charm, but he was already gone.

One panicked second passed, then another, and then the world behind her exploded. Hermione felt the rush of dark magic--tasted acid on her tongue, sensed the air crackle and the space around her contract ever so slightly at the edges--an instant before the most powerful and destructive spell she could have imagined blew apart the outer wall of the Great Hall.

She was standing roughly fifty paces from the wall, and the force of the explosion flung her backwards and onto the blood-soaked stone floor. She lay on her back, her ears ringing, and saw hundreds of pieces of rock and debris suspended above her in mid-air. Turning her head to the right she saw tiny Professor Flitwick, his face contorted with concentration, his wand aloft. He too, she guessed, had sensed the oncoming calamity and was now trying to prevent the debrief from the explosion from killing or maiming those on their side of the wall. Hermione watched as Kinglsey dragged two figures away from the destruction as Flitwick willed the debris away from those left in the Hall before letting it fall with terrible thud. Hermione wondered how many had been buried beneath the falling rubble; she thought that Terry Boot might have been standing nearby in the moments before the destruction. If he had been, she knew he couldn’t have survived.

Hermione willed herself to her feet. Death Eaters were pouring through the breach, one cloaked figure after another after another, hampered only by the uneven terrain marred by the fallen rubble. In a matter of moments, at least a dozen fighters had entered into the Hall and there were, she knew, countless more behind them.

“ _GET THE WOUNDED OUT NOW_ ,” yelled Kingsley, his magically amplified voice bouncing across the Hall. Hermione glanced to the back of the room--there were still a score of injured making their way to the exits, a handful of the healthier wounded disapparated, while several more, led by Hagrid and Arthur Weasley, turned and sprinted towards the fray.

Kingsley was ahead of them all, a sense of terrible and awesome fury amplifying his every feature. His wand moved so fast that Hermione could not track its movements, but the two Death Eaters at the front of the pack fell, dead, before they could raise their wands to defend themselves. WIth a long sweep of his wand Kingsley sent a wave of magic that bowled over three more Death Eaters at once. Then Professor Flitwick was at his side and the two stood back to back, their wands a blur as they tried desperately to stem the tide.

Minerva McGonagall stood towards the back of the room, muttering softly under her breath, her wand in the air. After a moment, the four house tables rose from where Hagrid had placed them and floated, suspended in midair, directly in front of her gaze. Hermione watched, transfixed, as McGonagall’s murmurs gradually grew louder and louder, until she was shouting in a language Hermione had never before heard. She looked, Hermione realized, like Albus Dumbledore, ancient power radiating from every part of her.

There was a blinding flash of light, the four tables disappeared, and in their place stood four gigantic lions, each the size of a large elephant. McGonagall staggered under the strain of the spell, but willed her arm aloft and pointed to the breach. One by one, the lions turned and leapt towards the coming Death Eaters. The foremost grabbed a cloaked figure in its jaws, lifted the Death Eater ten feet off the ground, and threw him savagely into the opposite wall. McGonagall fell to the ground, unconscious and Professor Sprout, whose presence Hermione had not before registered, rushed to her side. She picked McGonagall up and carried her, sprinting, towards the exit.

Hermione’s thoughts were for Harry, but she did not call out for him. He was under his cloak and, as far as the Death Eaters knew, he was already safely out of the castle. She prayed silently--to whom she would not have been able to say--that he had not been in the way of the blast, that he was not among those buried beneath the debris. “ _No_ , she thought, gripping her wand, “ _that is not how his story ends_.” Harry would go to the fighting, she knew, and when he got there he would find her waiting. The lions were, for a time, keeping the enemy at bay but more and more Death Eaters slipped past them and into the Hall.

Hermione sprinted forward and shot a spell at the first Death Eater she found. He snarled an angry, hateful smile and shot a flash of green light directly at her chest. She spun away from the curse and thought _Petrificus Totalus_ , throwing the body-bind curse at her foe, who blocked it easily before redoubling his attacks on her. Hermione blocked spell after spell, the residue from the dark magic stinging her arms, and waited for opening. It came after a few moments when one of McGonagall’s lions wandered near the Death Eater. As he looked up at the great cat, Hermione’s stunner took him in the face and he collapsed into a crumpled heap. Exhilarated, Hermione turned from her attacker and came face to face with Lord Voldemort.

Hermione’s blood froze, rooting her to the spot. Voldemort floated towards her, like a Dementor, the body of one of McGonagall’s lions dead on the ground behind him.  He paid the rest of the small band of fighters no mind, fixing his snake-like gaze directly on her.

“Potter’s Mudblood,” he said softly, raising his wand. “You, at least, I can take from him. _AVADA KEDAVRA_.”

Hermione raised her wand to defend herself, knowing already that it was too late. She had waited too long, frozen for an instant by the presence of a childhood monster made manifest. She knew there was no way to block the oncoming rush of death, but she found herself wishing, sadly, that she had died fighting back. Her last thoughts were of Ron, and of Harry. She hoped they knew how much she loved them.

In the fraction of a moment between when Voldemort said the incantation and the jet of green light would have found her heart, Harry Potter pulled off his invisibility cloak and stepped in front of the Killing Curse. It struck him squarely in the chest and he fell, silently, to the stone floor.

Hermione’s cry echoed around the Hall as she something inside of herself shattered. She looked down at Harry and, without thinking, without planning, without even realizing what it was she was doing she pointed her wand at Voldemort, his features flushed with triumph, and screamed.

It wasn’t a spell she knew; she didn’t say or think any incantation. She didn’t have a plan, plans were for Hermione Granger, not the bereft and broken girl she had, in one terrible instant, become. She just thought of Harry. She thought of his green eyes and crooked smile, of his kindness and courage, of the warmth and safety of his arms, of a dance they had once shared alone together on a cold and windy mountain. She thought of Harry and all of the sorrow, despair, guilt, and anguish within her rose from her the darkest part of her heart and through the tip of her wand, directly at Voldemort.

The room exploded in crimson light, and Voldemort was flung off his feet and backwards across the room. The two Death Eaters closest to him fell and lay quite still. Hermione’s wand burned hot in her palm and she dropped it, falling to her knees as the strength left her. Voldemort magically steadied himself in mid-flight, wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth, and pointed his wand at Hermione.

 _“MY LORD, NO!”_ cried Severus Snape from several meters away, throwing a hastily-cast shield charm between Hermione and Voldemort. Voldemort stopped for a fraction of a second, his face murderous. Then he smiled and lowered his wand.

“Wise as always, Severus,” Voldemort said softly. “Someone else will have to kill her for me, though I daresay she may welcome death now that her hero is gone.”

And Hermione, through her grief and despair, understood. Harry had given his life for her, had willingly stepped in front of certain death so that she might live. He had given her the very same protection that his mother had given him the first time he faced Voldemort and lived. What he failed to understand, however, was that in so doing, in making Hermione watch him die for her, he had left her as good as dead.

Hermione looked at her wand hand, which had a large, angry burn down her palm. She picked up her wand reflexively but did not rise from her knees. Her fight was over. A squat, ugly Death Eater walked towards her, pointed his wand at her face, and was struck in the chest by gold jet of light, cast from over Hermione’s shoulder.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, Rubeus Hagrid, Professor Flitwick, and Arthur Weasley ran past her, towards the oncoming rush of Death Eaters. Hermione registered numbly that they were among the last left in the Hall. Did they not realize that Harry was already dead? They should save themselves, now that the war was lost. Hagrid hurled himself into a mass of cloaked figures and Hermione could hear their bones crack under the weight of his blows.

Hermione crawled, on her hands and knees, her wand in her hand, to Harry’s body, unmoving on the stones before her. She didn’t think she had the strength to apparate, she didn’t even know if her wand would work after whatever had come out of it moments before. And besides, she remembered her promise to herself. She didn’t want to die but, since it seemed like she was going to die anyway, she wanted to die with Harry, her beautiful, brave friend who had protected her to the last. She reached his still form and pulled herself across his body, shielding him from any further harm, and felt herself rise and fall with his breathing.

 _Breathing_. He was breathing. Hermione put her fingers under his jaw and, sure enough, felt a pulse, slow but strong. Harry was alive.

Hermione gripped her wand, desperate to get him out and away from the fighting, but as she tried to disapparate a terrible pain ran from her wand arm and down to the core of herself with such intensity that she nearly dropped her wand. She stopped and tried to clear her head. Whatever it was that she had thrown at Voldemort had injured her and hampered her magic; she was not going to be able to get them out on her own.

 _“HELP!”_ she screamed, all tactics or subterfuge forgotten. _“HELP ME, HE’S STILL ALIVE_.”

Arthur, who had been frantically throwing spells at Lucius Malfoy and Bellatrix, turned at the sound of her voice, just as a jet of light from Bellatrix’s wand struck him in the shoulder and severed his arm from his body. He fell with a scream of agony, a fountain of blood erupting from his shoulder as Bellatrix laughed hysterically and moved in for the kill. Before anyone knew what was happening, Arthur flew backwards, toward the back of the Hall, pulled quickly as though by an invisible string. Molly Weasley stood alone in front of the tapestry, her eyes full of panicked tears, summoning her husband out of the chaos of battle. He landed at her feet and she pulled him up and through the threshold. No fewer than six jets of light flew to where they stood and obliterated the wall behind them. The back wall of the Great Hall fell in on itself, blocking the safe passage the Room of Requirement had, in perhaps its last act, given to the castle’s defenders.

It was over, Hermione knew. Apart from her and Harry, only Hagrid, Kingsley, Flitwick, and two of McGonagall’s lions  were left in the Hall. There were simply too many, and she couldn’t use her wand. So she took her uninjured hand and put it in Harry’s, waiting for the end.

Then, from nowhere, in flash of hair and humanity, Hagrid was there. He scooped Hermione and Harry up into his massive arms and sprinted away from the fighting.

“ _GET THEM OUT, HAGRID_ ” yelled Kingsley, and Hermione watched as, with a wave of his wand, Professor Flitwick conjured a wall of fire behind him, separating he and Kingsley and the rest of the battle from Hagrid, Harry, and Hermione. Hermione gasped, knowing that Flitwick had just ensured that he and Kingsley would die fighting in the hope that Hagrid could get Hermione and Harry to safety.

“That won’ hold ‘em fer long,” grunted Hagrid as he ran. “Hermione, think now, you’re tha cleverest witch of yer age. How can you an’ Harry get outta here?”

And something in Hagrid’s voice, the same voice that had championed, encouraged, and comforted her for seven years, made Hermione Granger wake up and remember who she was. Her handbag, in which she had carried all of their supplies and possessions for months was, as always, magically shrunk and nestled safely in the front pocket of her jeans. And in a dark corner of that bag was an item that could save them.

The morning after they escaped Malfoy Manor, right after they had buried Dobby in the sandy earth outside of Shell Cottage, she had retired to her room, sat quietly on the bed, and promised herself that she would never be trapped like that again. After consulting a few of the books in the bottom of her bag, she had taken a small metal comb, placed it in conjured wooden box, and, with a whispered incantation of _Portus_ , made sure that she and her friends would always have a way out. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten, but in her grief and panic she did not remember that Hermione Granger, not the scared girl she had been just moments before, had made sure weeks ago that she would always be able to save herself, and Harry.

“I can get us out,” she told Hagrid quickly. “I just need--” But over Hagrid’s shoulder she watched as Voldemort walked, quite unscathed through Flitwick’s fire, and shot a jet of black lightning right into Hagrid’s back. Hagrid fell, and Harry and Hermione went tumbling from his arms. Hermione landed hard, next to Harry, and desperately pulled the miniature bag from her pocket. She didn’t have time to search for the box, she was going to have to summon it.

Hagrid pushed himself up, pain and fear evident on his giant, brave face.

“Go,” he said to her, in a voice barely above a whisper.

“We love you,” Hermione said back softly, tears in her eyes, as Hagrid staggered, turned, let out a guttural roar, and hurled himself at Voldemort.

Hermione gripped her wand, concentrated hard on the wooden box at the bottom of her bag. Before she even thought the incantation she could feel the pain start to return to her arm. She watched as Voldemort, smiling, disappeared, only to reappear behind Hagrid’s running form. In in instant it was over. Voldemort thrust his wand, and a giant metal spike flew from its tip, pushing through Hagrid’s broad shoulders and out the other side, through his chest.

 _“ACCIO!”_ Hermione thought, as hard she could, through her grief as her giant friend staggered, dropped to his knees, then fell dead on floor. The pain of the spell tore through her, and she screamed in utter agony as a small wooden box slowly rose out of the bag and landed on the floor beside her.

Voldemort turned, saw Hermione and Harry laying some twenty paces away from him, alone and out of protectors, and smiled. He glided slowly towards them, and Hermione thought that world around him dimmed as he passed through it, that he brought the darkness with him.

Hermione seized Harry with one hand and the wooden box with the other. She smashed the box onto the stone floor, reached through its splinters, and wrapped her fingers around the small metal comb. Voldemort, now only steps away, saw what she was doing, his eyes widened as he realized, too late, what was about to happen.

And with a violent jerk at her navel, Harry and Hermione disappeared, spirited away from the Battle of Hogwarts.


	3. Requiem and Reverie

  
Hermione and Harry landed with a thud onto a dew-covered lawn, their wands, Hermione’s handbag, and the metal comb bouncing across the wet grass. She had forgotten, somehow, just how unpleasant it was to travel by Portkey, the memory perhaps supplanted by some of the other, even less pleasant sensations she had come to know in the magical world. Hermione took a few steadying breaths and shakily rose to her feet. After a few moments searching in the early-morning light, she located and gathered the scattered items. At least, she thought tiredly as she grasped her wand, she’d be able to try to defend herself and Harry if the Death Eaters found a way to follow them here. She wasn’t sure if she had yet regained the ability to use her wand without the blinding pain that assaulted her in the Great Hall, and she wasn’t eager to try unless their lives depended on it.

Hermione turned to face a large, white, wooden house, smiling despite herself at the sight of its purple door and shutters. It had been years since she had been here; she had been a different person entirely the last time her aunt had thrown open the purple door and welcomed her inside with a crushing hug. That girl, Hermione knew, fresh off of her triumphant third year at Hogwarts, would not have been able to fathom the crisis and terror that would bring her back to her favorite place in the Muggle world some four years later.

“Hermione,” groaned Harry softly, and she spun on the spot and ran to his side, slipping slightly on the wet lawn as she knelt beside him. Harry had cuts and scorch marks on his arms and face. There was a hole in his shirt and Hermione saw a large, crescent wound, shallow but bleeding, on his chest, marking the spot where Voldemort’s Killing Curse had struck him only moments ago. But he was otherwise alive and unhurt, and it was only after she had confirmed this several times that she allowed herself to meet his gaze. Harry smiled as his green eyes locked with hers, and he let out a long, low sigh of relief.

“We made it,” he whispered. She looked into his eyes and, without warning, she felt her own fill with tears. Hermione tried to hold herself together but it was useless; she had just watched Harry die, falling before Voldemort’s spell onto the cold, stone floor of the Great Hall. Only a few minutes ago, Hermione thought she had lost him--and herself--forever. Her tears fell hard and fast as she choked back a sob.

“Hermione--” Harry began, but she cut him off.

“Don’t ever do that again” she shouted, her voice breaking. “I cannot lose you, Harry. I won’t survive it.”

Harry looked at her for long moment and then nodded, his lips pressed tightly together. Hermione wiped her eyes and took a deep breath. She didn’t want to talk anymore, she wouldn’t have the strength to answer any of the questions he might have about what happened in the moments after he fell. There would be time later, she knew, to tell him of Hagrid’s death, to grieve everyone who had died that night for them, for Harry. But for now, Harry was alive, alive and whole and here, right in front of her, brought back, once again, from certain death.

Hermione smiled at Harry, softly brushed his jet black hair away from his face, put her hand in his, and drank in the life dancing in his bright eyes. She shifted to lie down beside him, put her head on his chest, let herself rise and fall with the rhythm of his breathing, and felt the wondrous thrum of his heart. They lay there together, in silence, as the sun slowly rose behind them.

\----------

Hermione poured water from the boiling kettle, its shrill whistle filling the large kitchen, into her favorite mug. It had taken her some time, standing on an old wooden stool, her arm searching blindly but deliberately in the cabinet above the stove, to locate its chipped handle, but it felt like she had reunited with an old friend as she watched the purple vessel slowly fill with water. As her tea began to steep, she put her nose to the mug, inhaled the scent of lavender and honey, and made her way slowly across the brick floor to the kitchen table.

There was a time during her third year when Hermione had spent almost every evening in Hagrid’s hut. She would trudge down across the Hogwarts lawn after dinner, her stated reason to help Hagrid prepare for Buckbeak’s trial. But both she and Hagrid knew that she went to his hut so often because she had never felt so alone in her life. Overwhelmed by her schedule and shunned by Ron, she felt that Hagrid was her only friend in the world. When she became overwhelmed by her loneliness and sadness, she would break down at his small table, shedding bitter tears. And Hagrid would gather her in his strong arms and murmur that everything would be alright.

And now, alone in the kitchen of her aunt’s summer cottage, Hermione wondered how she was supposed to grieve for such a friend, for someone who had died protecting her from a monster. But she knew that Hagrid wouldn’t much care about the way she chose to mourn him, so long as she spared a thought of him once in a while. So she thought about Hagrid, and then about Lupin and Kingsley.

After a few moments it became too much. With shaking fingers, Hermione placed the mug on the table, put her head in her arms, and wept for her friends, her sobs echoing through the empty kitchen until she fell into a fitful sleep.

\----------

She didn’t know how long she slept, but her body was cramped and stiff and the afternoon light poured through the kitchen windows when Hermione awoke. She stretched her arms above her head, rose from the table, and made her way into the hallway and then up the wooden staircase to her old room, where she had half-carried Harry hours before. When she reached the top of the stairs, Hermione opened the door quietly and peered inside.

Harry was still asleep, breathing steadily, the covers pulled down to expose his damaged chest. Hermione had dressed and bandaged his wound when she had first put him in bed, and she moved closer to Harry’s prone form to confirm that the bandage did not yet need changing.

Hermione frowned slightly. She didn’t know how long Harry would sleep, although she suspected that the strain of surviving a Killing Curse might keep him under for a while. He had collapsed back into unconsciousness the moment his back had touched the bed and, from the look of it, he hadn’t so much as turned over since falling asleep. She wondered idly if he was dreaming.

\----------

Hermione was using her wand to levitate several pots and pans around the kitchen--making a large saucepan turn cartwheels back and forth in front of the sink--when she heard Harry open the bedroom door and start down the stairs. She had been practicing spells for more than an hour and was pleased and relieved by her progress; after some lingering soreness in her arm, she had gradually felt her powers come back to her, and now she barely felt a tingle in her wand hand. She smiled in relief. It had been terrifying to be unable to use magic, particularly when her life depended on it, and she had been quietly worried all day about when and if she would recover.

“It’s been a very long few days, Hermione,” Harry said from the doorway, “but you see the floating pots too, right?” Hermione chuckled and nodded as, with a wave of her wand, she returned the items safely back on top of the stove, the cartwheeling saucepan bringing up the rear.

“I didn’t know when you’d wake up,” Hermione said, looking closely at Harry. He looked tired, but more or less no worse for wear. She could see a new bandage on his chest through the half-done buttons of his shirt, and noted with annoyance the clumsiness of the dressing.

“I got hungry, I think,” replied Harry, smiling and looking around the kitchen. “I would have stayed in bed if I knew you were organizing the pots and pans into a ballet troupe.” Hermione laughed, walked to the sink, and poured Harry a glass of water. Harry took the glass with a murmur of thanks.

“What is this place, anyway?” asked Harry, moving towards the kitchen window to peer into the back yard. It was nearly sunset, and orange light filtered through the leaves of the large oak tree standing sentinel in the yard and into the kitchen.

“It’s my aunt’s summer cottage,” Hermione answered with a smile. “We came here every July when I was a girl. It’s my favorite place in the world, other than Hogwarts.” Though as she said it, she wondered if the ancient castle, so long a symbol of promise and knowledge and wonder was still her favorite place. After all, she had just spent hours in Hogwarts that might as well have been spent in hell. She had just watched her friends die in that castle, she thought she had watched Harry die in that castle; she didn’t know if it would ever feel like home again.

“The day after Malfoy Manor,” Hermione continued, “right after we buried Dobby, I realized how foolish I had been to let us be in that situation, where we didn’t have a way out.” Harry’s mouth tightened when she mentioned Dobby, but he nodded and she went on. “So I went back to my room and I made a Portkey. I read that it’s easier to make a Portkey to a place you already know, so I chose here.”

Harry looked at her for a long moment, his green eyes fixed on her features. “Thank you for getting us out of there,” he said quietly. “You saved us.”

“ _I_ saved us?” asked Hermione, incredulously. “We both know that I would be dead right now if you hadn’t stepped in front of that curse.”

Harry shook his head. Hermione walked to him and took his hand softly in her own. She looked up at him saw a familiar sight--his usually dazzling eyes shadowed with guilt and anguish and sorrow. He gave her the credit, she knew, because he was unwilling to take any for himself. In his mind, Harry was responsible for every death that happened at Hogwarts last night, every hasty funeral they would hold in the coming days representing his own failure. It was too much for anyone to carry, and Harry had carried this weight for so long that she was surprised he hadn’t been crushed beneath it years ago.

“Harry,” she said softly, moving her hand to his face when he tried to look away. “You saved me. Like always. Thank you.” She couldn’t know if he heard her, if he allowed himself to believe, for just a moment, that he really was the hero everyone else in the Wizarding World already knew him to be. But he met her eyes and they stood there together, as one moment ran into the next, until Harry took a deep breath and stepped out of her grasp, back towards the window.

“I didn’t just save you,” murmured Harry. “I destroyed a Horcrux.”

Hermione gazed at him, uncomprehending, until, perhaps more slowly than she would have liked, all of the pieces clicked into place. In an instant, all the unsolved questions that had been needling at her mind for years had an answer. Harry’s visions, his ability to speak Parseltongue, the pain he felt in his scar, all of it was instantly explained.

“There was a Horcrux inside you?” she asked, still half-terrified of the answer.

“Yeah,” said Harry with a practiced calm in his voice. “Voldemort made it by accident the night my parents died. But it’s gone now, Dumbledore told me when I--” He stopped abruptly.

“You saw Dumbledore?” Hermione asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Harry nodded, tears coming to his eyes, and Hermione moved back across the kitchen and took him into her arms, feeling his silent tears fall onto her shoulder. She held him tightly until, to her surprise, she felt a strong rumble from his abdomen. She looked up at Harry, and he smiled.

“I guess we should eat something,” Harry told her. “It’s hungry work, dying.”

And with a laugh and a light punch on his arm, Hermione released Harry from her embrace and moved towards the cabinet, hoping it might have something that she could, with her relatively limited skills, turn into dinner.

\----------

It took a few minutes of searching--during which, in a weak moment, she wondered if it was too risky to send out for delivery--but Hermione had found a few boxes of pasta and several jars of tomato sauce in the large kitchen pantry. Before long, and with no unanticipated cartwheels from the cookware, she and Harry sat at the long kitchen table, bowls of surprisingly edible penne steaming in front of them.

Hermione had also found several bottles of red wine in the pantry and, in a spur of the moment decision, she had opened one of the bottles and filled two of the large wine glasses her aunt kept over the stove. And while she had admittedly at first felt a little silly--like they were play-acting at being adults--the first glass warmed her and made her feel somewhat braver, and after that it didn’t feel awkward anymore. She wondered, if things were different, if they hadn’t been living through a war for more than a year, if this was something they would have done together often.

 After his third bowl of pasta and his second glass of wine, Harry leaned across the table and gave Hermione a serious look.

“What happened after, you know?” Harry asked. Hermione looked at her friend, knowing that he had held back from asking this question for hours. She took a long drink from her glass, folded her hands on the table in front of her, and looked him in the eye.

“After you were hit with the curse,” Hermione began, her voice shaking only slightly, “I don’t know what happened exactly. I felt something inside me shatter.” Harry looked away, but Hermione waited until he looked back at her before she continued. “I sent...something at him. It wasn’t a spell I knew; I just screamed and a wave of red light flew at him and knocked him backwards. It took almost everything out of me. I collapsed, and then I couldn’t even hold my wand without incredible pain.”

Almost as though he didn’t realize what he was doing--and, in truth, Hermione could not have said if he did know--Harry reached across the table and held her hand.

“You-Know-Who wanted to kill me,” Hermione went on, “but Snape stopped him. He realized, I think, that I might be protected by the same magic that saved you as a baby. Because you died for me.” And Hermione let that sentence, and all of its implications, hang in the air between them. They both knew the key ingredient in the magic that had shielded Harry for seventeen years. Lily Potter had refused to step aside because she loved her son more than her own life. But sitting in her aunt’s kitchen, Hermione couldn’t ask Harry why he had stepped in front of a Killing Curse for her. After another long moment, she went on.

“Even though he couldn’t kill me, the other Death Eaters were more than happy to oblige, and I couldn’t use my wand. But Kingsley saved me, and he and some of the Order kept fighting, and I crawled to you. Once I realized you were alive, I called for help and Hagrid was there. He picked us up and ran us away from the fighting, and Kingsley and Flitwick--” She stopped, choking back a sob.

“It’s ok,” said Harry, squeezing her hand. “You don’t have to--”

“No,” said Hermione, cutting him off. “I need to tell you what happened.” She took three deep, steadying breaths, and then continued.

“Kingsley and Flitwick put a wall of fire behind them to give Hagrid time to get away. I don’t know if they made it out. Hagrid tried to get us out but before long You-Know-Who found a way through the fire. I remembered just in time about the Portkey, but Hagrid--” she paused. “He didn’t make it, Harry.”

And that, at last, was the end of her composure. She saw Harry’s green eyes start to fill with tears as her own were flooded, obliterating her vision. She took her hand back from Harry as she cried, loudly and openly, and tried in vain to wipe away her tears. Harry stood up from the table and walked back to the kitchen window. He put his hands on the sink and hung his head. As she attempted to pull herself back together, Hermione looked at her friend and saw that his whole body was shaking with silent sobs.

Hermione rose from the table, still crying softly, walked to Harry, and wrapped her arms around him. She squeezed as tightly as she could, and they cried, together, for their friends.

Time passed, how much Hermione could not say, but she eventually let go of Harry, wiped her eyes dry, and went back to the table.

“What do you think,” she began, “was Hagrid’s worse idea, keeping a baby dragon in his hut or inventing a new species of monster for fourteen year olds to raise?” Harry gave a watery chuckle and turned to face her.

“Don’t forget about sending Ron and me to talk with an army of murderous giant spiders,” Harry replied. Hermione laughed.

“Was there another bottle in the pantry?”

And Harry and Hermione sat there, at the kitchen table, for hours, drinking and laughing and remembering their friends. Harry told Hermione about Hagrid finding him to deliver his Hogwarts letter, sparing no detail, and Hermione shook with laughter as Harry told her about taking Hagrid on the Muggle Tube.

Hours went by and, eventually, fatigue overtook them both. Leaving the empty dishes, glasses, and wine bottles on the table, Hermione followed Harry out of the kitchen and up the stairs. And without saying a word, without asking a question of either Harry or herself, Hermione followed Harry into her bedroom. After everything that had happened in the last few days, she didn’t want to spend the night alone. Harry smiled as she closed the door, a silent acknowledgement that he was happy to have her there too. She crawled into bed next to him, pulled the covers over them both, and quickly fell asleep.

\----------

When she was a girl, sleeping in her aunt’s home, Hermione would wake up at first light, sneak down the stairs, and go out onto the back porch where she could read whichever volume in her suitcase full of books called out to her and listen to the birds sing their early morning songs. It was this old habit, Hermione thought ruefully, that must be the reason she woke at dawn, alert and fully awake, laying in her old bed and listening to Harry’s soft snores. Taking great care not to wake him, Hermione rolled lightly from the bed, pulled a change of clothes from her handbag, and headed for the bathroom.

As Hermione left the room, she was greeted by a shimmering silver cat, waiting for her at the top of the stairs, a patronus she knew belonged to Professor McGonagall. It was a sign of how long she had truly been a witch, she thought, that she didn’t start with fright from the odd, unexpected shimmer. The cat seemed to consider Hermione appraisingly for a moment, before speaking in her professor’s voice.

“I hope you and Harry are safe and unharmed,” said the patronus. “Please send word by your patronus as soon as you can. If we don't hear from you soon, we will send out search parties to find you and bring you home. We have gathered the survivors at the Order’s existing safehouses. Be careful coming back to us, there are anti-apparation wards across Britain, and they are tracking magical travel. We hope to have you both back with us soon.” With one final shimmer, the cat patronus disappeared.

Hermione smile, raised her wand, brought her patronus memory to mind, and conjured her silver otter. Her patronus danced around her for a moment, and then disappeared through the wall at the end of the hall. She had told McGonagall that they were safe and would make their way back to them soon. Hermione followed the otter's path down the hall before turning right into the bathroom.

It was a luxury, she realized, to brush her teeth in a real house, with running water, and a mirror over the sink, and after a year of living mostly in the wilderness, it was a luxury she didn’t take for granted. After taking great care to rinse the excess paste off of her toothbrush--as the daughter of dentists, she prided herself on always having an exquisite toothbrush--she looked herself in the mirror.

At first, Hermione was surprised by the girl who looked back at her. The last time she had used a real bathroom was at Shell Cottage, and a lot had happened to her in the handful of days that had passed since she had left Bill and Fleur’s seaside home. She was so thin, a product, she knew, of living rough for months at a time. Her face was pale, but she had dark circles under her eyes that she feared might be permanent--the last time they had looked this bad was during the week before her O.W.L. examinations, when she had barely slept for days on end. And though she may have been imagining it, she thought she could see a hollow sadness, a sort of learned grief, reflected in her eyes. Was that possible? Could a person really look at themselves and see that kind of change?

It had been a fleeting thought, really, when it first occurred to her on the dew-covered lawn yesterday morning. But now that she had time to really consider it, it was obvious she really was an entirely different person than she had been when she had last been in this house nearly four years ago. There was nothing to argue about; the proof was in the pale, thin face of the girl staring back at her in the mirror.

But no, Hermione corrected herself, that wasn’t real change, her thinness and the circles under her eyes. With a few weeks of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking and some accompanying early bedtimes, Hermione knew that she would look more or less like herself, regain the color in her cheeks, maybe even learn to laugh easily again so that her face didn’t automatically revert to a mask of concern.

The real change was that hollowness, the marked difference in her eyes that she still thought she might have imagined. It was a look she had seen in the faces of so many members of the Order who had lived through the first war, a hard-earned understanding of the world and its terrors. This change had been coming for weeks, starting with her torture at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange and reaching a terrible crescendo when she watched Harry die and felt the best parts of herself die with him.

Hermione returned to a question that had followed her from the moment she decided to leave Hogwarts and go with Harry and Ron to hunt for horcruxes. As a Muggle-born witch, she often thought about choices, about how there were moments in life where you set yourself on an entirely different course, regardless of whether or not you are aware at the time that you couldn’t ever go back. When she was eleven, Hermione had made two such choices. She had decided to leave her parents behind, to go to Hogwarts, and to join the Wizarding World, and she had nudged the Sorting Hat, which was torn between placing her in Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, toward the House where she would eventually meet her chosen family, the people she cared about more than anything else in the world.

She had known when she left with Harry, erasing her parents’ memories before she went, that she was making another such choice, an irrevocable change in her life, in herself. And so she often wondered what waited for her at the end of this new, darker path.

Even if everything ended exactly as she hoped, with Voldemort defeated and her friends alive and whole, what would be left of her, Hermione, at the end?

\----------

It wasn’t the first time she’d asked herself if she was in love with Harry Potter.

Hermione prided herself on being sensible, on understanding herself and her emotions, so it had always been an unavoidable question, really. Harry was larger than life from the moment she met him; he was decent and kind and brave and filled to the brim with destiny and greatness, even before he was the Chosen One. So she had asked herself often, when she found herself thinking about him in idle moments, if she was the kind of fool who falls for her best friend. The answer had always been the same, even after they spent weeks together, alone in a small tent, running for their lives on the edge of the world, even after she had danced with him and asked him, in a moment of desperation, to run with her away from the war.

But now, sitting on the back porch and listening to the birdsongs of her childhood, she wasn’t so sure, even though she had just had her first kiss with Ron less than two days ago. So much had changed, of that she was certain. Was it really impossible that her heart had changed as well?

Hermione thought hard and critically about the last few days. She remembered the moments after Percy was wounded, knowing that they had to get him out of the castle but wholly refusing to leave Harry’s side. She remembered looking at Harry in the Hogwarts corridors, seeing the pain and guilt visible on his face and knowing that she would do anything she could to ease his burden just a little. She remembered walking through those same halls with him and resolving that, should it come to it, she would die with him. She remembered the feeling she had when she thought she had watched Harry die, a terrible grief that had torn her asunder, as if she had been the one who had died, a grief that caused her somehow, to expel all her magic at Harry’s killer. And she remembered how they had spent the last day together, laughing and drinking and grieving, how she kept finding excuses to touch him, to comfort him, how something unspoken inside herself couldn’t bear to spend the night without him.

There was only one conclusion, and it was obvious and inescapable: she was in love with him, she was in love with him in the way that made her follow him to war, in a way that made it so that she was only making it out of that war if Harry made it too.

But now that she realized that she loved him, it was almost unimportant compared to the other questions that immediately followed. What did it matter, in the end, what Hermione carried in her heart? After all, as far as Hermione knew, Harry was still in love with Ginny, whom she loved like a sister, and they all might be dead tomorrow, if not sooner.

No, Hermione had learned long ago that it wasn’t enough to simply know things, what mattered was what she did with the information. She knew she loved Harry Potter, what mattered was what she did next. She thought about Harry, how at Hogwarts he had been so careless with his safety, been so ready to jump into the fighting, been ready to die for her. He wasn’t going to protect his own life--not knowing that her life was tied to his, that being reckless with his life meant being reckless with hers--so Hermione would have to do it for him.

And in that moment, sitting on her aunt’s back porch, Hermione understood what had to happen next. For too long, for years, she had stayed in the background of the war, one of Harry’s friends, someone who needed to be protected by the real adults in the room. No longer.

Hermione Granger was, as Hagrid told her in his last moments, the brightest witch of her age. She was blessed with intelligence, and wit, and cunning, traits that had helped her, had helped Harry, for the past seven years. And now she would use those talents to win the war, to keep Harry safe and, if she could manage it, to bring down the darkest wizard of all time.

It was, at last, time for Hermione Granger to lead.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	4. Three Problems

Hermione stood at the kitchen table with her wand aloft and chewed her bottom lip in concentration. Floating in front of her were three wine corks from the night before. She had, moments ago, transformed them into portkeys, designed to take her, Harry, and Ron back to this house in case of emergency. Hermione used her wand to conjure three small paper bags and very carefully wrapped the bags around the corks. She wasn’t certain what happened to a person who touched a portkey while already standing at the destination, but she wasn’t anxious to find out.

After emerging from her reverie on the back porch, Hermione had spent the morning tidying up, using her wand to vanish the wine bottles and empty containers, but cleaning the pots, dishes, and kitchen surfaces by hand. She didn’t often needlessly subject herself to traditional Muggle manual labor--being a Muggle-born witch carried with it enough challenges, in her opinion, to entitle Hermione to any magical cleaning shortcuts available to her--but today the simple, hypnotizing act of scrubbing the dirty dishes had allowed her to relax, free her mind, and begin to focus on what was to come.

There were, she had decided, two problems. Well no, that wasn’t strictly true. In truth there were dozens of problems, including how to house and feed all of the new members of the resistance, for Hermione knew that every single person who had stood with Harry at Hogwarts was now marked for death. None of the fighters from the Battle of Hogwarts would be able to return to the Wizarding World until Voldemort was defeated; they were a part of the Order now, whether they wanted to be or not. But even though Hermione could try to solve those quandaries--in fact she was reasonably certain that a small part of her subconscious was actively trying to figure out the best way to secure enough food to feed a small, battered army--she knew that she had to focus her efforts, her intellect, on winning the war. And, in the end, winning the war did come down to solving two problems.

The first problem was that damned snake, the final Horcrux they had to destroy before Harry could try to kill the most powerful dark wizard of all time. And after several hours of consideration, Hermione still had no idea how they were going to kill Nagini. Getting to Voldemort’s snake was a tall order days ago, before Voldemort knew that she was the last Horcrux anchoring his otherwise mortal soul to life. Now that his other Horcruxes were gone, there was no chance he would leave Nagini unattended or undefended. For all Hermione knew, he might plan to keep the snake by his side at all times. Even if they could get to Nagini, there was still the small matter of figuring out how to kill a massive, powerful snake, fortified by the dark magic that transformed her into a vessel for Voldemort’s soul.

The second problem was time, because each passing moment increased the chances of their task becoming all but impossible. At present there were only two parts of Voldemort’s soul left to be destroyed: Nagini and Voldemort himself. Now that Voldemort knew that they had destroyed the locket, the cup, the diary, and the diadem, however, it was only a matter of time before he decided to make more Horcruxes. They had been lucky, in all honesty, when they went hunting for Horcruxes the last time around. Voldemort was unaware that anyone was looking, so he had followed a set pattern in choosing and hiding his Horcruxes. That blunder was, she understood, the only reason they were able to find and destroy the cup and the diadem.

This time they wouldn’t be so fortunate; for all she knew Voldemort could make a Horcrux out of a railroad spike and drop it to the bottom of the ocean, never to be found. Harry had told her more than a year ago that Voldemort wanted his soul in seven pieces, as seven was the most powerful magical number, but she wondered how long that logic would restrain him now that he was down to a final Horcrux, how cautious he would be when it came to splitting the remainder of his tattered soul. 

These questions about what Voldemort would do next were, Hermione lamented, unanswerable and also utterly outside of her control. They did highlight the morning’s most important conclusion, however: if they were going to win, they had to win quickly.

Of course, Hermione knew, they weren’t ready to win the war quickly, or to win the war at all. Even before they had lost the Battle of Hogwarts, the Order was directionless, so wholly consumed by the admittedly admirable tasks of surviving and rescuing as many Muggle-born witches and wizards as possible that they hadn’t ever managed to strike back or mount any kind of meaningful resistance. Hermione knew little of what the Order had been up to while she, Ron, and Harry had been on the run, but she was certain that they weren’t organized into any kind of fighting force and she doubted that they had any real plan to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters; to the contrary, an uncharitable part of her suspected that they were actually waiting for Harry, through courage and nerve and destiny, to win the war, to save them.

Now, after their defeat at Hogwarts, things were certain to be even worse. Kingsley was dead. Lupin was dead and Tonks, now a widow, was probably too overcome with grief to concentrate on anything but Teddy. Arthur Weasley was gravely injured and Molly was sure to be consumed with caring both for him and for Percy, assuming that Percy had survived Rodolphus Lestrange’s curse. In the span of a few hours the Order of the Phoenix had lost most of the leadership that remained after Dumbledore’s death. What was left was a battered, bruised, and random assortment of witches and wizards, many of them underage and most of them injured, crammed into a half-dozen safe houses scattered across Britain that would be relatively easy for the Death Eaters to locate and monitor.

So as Hermione stood making porkeys in her aunt’s kitchen, she finally grasped the full scope of the task to which she must devote herself to for the foreseeable future. She had to organize the Order of the Phoenix into a proper resistance, into a fighting force that could strike back against Voldemort and the Death Eaters, into an army that had a chance of winning a war against deadly foes. She had to come up with a plan to find and kill Nagini. And then, if she was still alive, she had to find a way for Harry to kill Voldemort, to end the war at last. 

And to do these things, she needed Harry on her side. Hermione was respected within the Order. She had done more than her fair share of fighting and everyone knew how smart she was, how her mind worked faster and better than almost anyone else in the Wizarding World. They would listen to her, but they would obey Harry. The members of the Order had, after all, just come to Hogwarts to fight and die for Harry, without Harry even asking for their help. They would follow him, the Chosen One, to war without hesitation. Harry was, she realized, going to have to remain the face of this fight, whether he wanted to or not.

Hermione sealed the paper bag around the last cork as Harry lumbered down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“You’re up early,” he said, looking around in apparent confusion at the clean kitchen. “Erm--sorry I didn’t help with any of it.” 

“It’s no bother,” Hermione answered, smiling. “It helps me think, and besides I couldn’t have my aunt coming to her summer cottage to find a ransacked and upturned kitchen. Here, catch.” Hermione tossed Harry the third paper bag and deposited the first two into her magically enlarged handbag. It was a poor throw, but luckily her target was the youngest Hogwarts House Seeker in more than a century, and he managed, with limited acrobatics, to catch the bag before it hit the ground.

“What’s this?” Harry asked, steadying himself and peering closely at the bag.

“A portkey,” Hermione replied, aiming her wand at the tea kettle on the stove to bring it back to a boil. “I realized how careless it was for me to have the only escape route, so I made one for you, me, and Ron. There’s a wine cork inside the bag that will take you back here whenever you touch it. Keep it in your pocket. Hopefully even if your hands are bound you’ll be able to get a finger on it”

“Brilliant,” Harry said, looking at Hermione said with a smile and moving to sit down at the table. “And you’re aunt won’t mind us appearing out of thin while she’s in the middle of a crossword?”

“She might at first,” Hermione said with a chuckle, “until she realizes she’s getting a surprise visit with her favorite niece.” Hermione moved to the stove, poured the boiling water into a mug, added a teabag, and handed it to Harry.

“Thanks,” he said to her gratefully.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” said Hermione with a smile. “The next thing I give you to drink won’t be nearly as tasty.” Harry looked at her, confused, and Hermione held up a small vial filled with a purple sludge-like liquid. Harry recognized the Polyjuice Potion and grimaced. “McGonagall sent a patronus early this morning; the bulk of the Order is recovering at Shell Cottage and the other safehouses. She warned us that they are tracking magical travel, so apparation is out. We’ll have to take our time getting there.”

Harry nodded as he took a tentative first sip of his tea, recoiling as the hot liquid burned his mouth and hastily blowing into the cup to cool it. Hermione grasped her own mug and sat down across from Harry. She gave him her most serious look and waited for him to meet her gaze.

“Harry,” she began tentatively, “we need to talk about what happens next.” 

“Ok,” said Harry with the slightest hint of the frown. “What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” Hermione continued, “and once we make it to Shell Cottage or to whichever safehouse McGonagall and the Weasleys are recovering in, we can’t just get there and then leave again.” 

“Of course not,” replied Harry, “we can’t leave without Ron, and we’ll need to check on Percy and Mr. Weasley and the rest.”

“No, Harry,” Hermione sighed, “I mean the three of us can’t go off on our own again. We have to stay and fight with the Order.” Hermione watched Harry’s face as his expression changed, slowly but surely, from confusion to stubborn refusal.

“No,” said Harry firmly.

“Harry,” Hermione began--

“I said no, Hermione,” interjected Harry, his voice raised slightly. “Vol-- You-Know-Who is hunting me, personally. You know how dangerous that is. You remember what happened at Godric’s Hollow. Wherever I go, people die. I set foot in Hogwarts for a few hours and now Hagrid and Kingsley and Lupin are all dead. I’m not going to stay at Shell Cottage or Grimuald place and get even more people killed. Nobody else is going to die for me.” Hermione sighed. She knew this was going to be difficult, but they didn’t have time for Harry, in his usual fashion, to brood for a few weeks before he came around to her way of doing things.

“Harry,” she said calmly, “the only way to save them is to win this war, and we can’t win it without them.”

“We’ve been doing fine on our own,” Harry retorted. “In less than a year we’ve found and destroyed three Horcruxes. There’s only one left, Hermione.”

“Harry we have days, maybe a few weeks to kill the snake and then kill him,” Hermione said desperately. “That’s all the time we have. We don’t have months to spend wandering alone in the woods anymore, Harry.”

“How do you figure that?” asked Harry. Hermione could see the anger and fear in his eyes. She knew how much he hated this, how he feared having another death on his conscience. Hermione would have done anything to spare him that anguish, but there was no other path. They had to win the war or they would all surely die. Hermione took a deep breath and silently assured herself that this was the only way.

“Everything’s different than it was two days ago,” Hermione said evenly. “He’s down to his last Horcrux, but we have to assume he’ll try to make more as soon as he’s sure he can do it. But it won’t be like last time. He won’t use objects we can track, he won’t follow his old patterns. Most importantly, I doubt you’ll be able to see into his head. You haven’t had any visions since you--” she caught herself "--since he destroyed the Horcrux inside of you, have you?” Harry shook his head slowly. 

“Harry, if he makes another Horcrux before we kill him I don’t think we’ll ever be able to beat him. And everyone we love, everyone we are trying to keep safe, they’ll die one by one until none of us are left and there’s no one alive to stop him. The only chance we have is to win this war soon, and we can't do that on our own. We need help. And there is a whole army of witches and wizards who showed up to fight for you on a moment's notice, without you even asking. Harry, I promise that the only way to save them is to let them fight for you again.”

Harry said nothing, and Hermione let the silence linger. She had done all she could; she laid out the problem as clearly and concisely as possible, but this was Harry’s decision, Harry’s war, and she couldn’t do what she needed to do without him. And besides, Hermione knew that she and her desperate heart would follow Harry, whatever he decided. If Harry insisted that they leave and go back to hunting for Horcruxes, she would go with him, even though she knew that path led to ruin and despair.

“Hermione,” Harry said softly, “if we stay, they’re going to want me to lead them. You know they will. And I don't know how to kill Nagini. I don't know how to beat him." He paused and put his face in his hands. "Hermione, I have no idea what to do next.”

Hermione reached across the table and took Harry’s hands in her own.

“It’s ok, Harry,” she said. “I have a plan.”

Hermione knew what she was asking: for Harry to believe in her, to believe in her the same way she had believed in him for seven years.

“Ok,” said Harry, his eyes bright. “Tell me what you need me to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own any material from Harry Potter.


End file.
